SANTA ANA, Calif. (March 19, 2020) – A discrimination-related incident in correlation with novel coronavirus (COVID-19) was recently reported at a local Orange County high school.

“I am appalled by the racist conduct perpetrated against Vietnamese American students by their classmates at Bolsa Grande High School,” said Vice Chairman Andrew Do, First District. “As a former victim of repeated racist attacks when I was a student at Bolsa Grande, it hurts me deeply to see these same patterns continue decades later. While I condemn those students’ acts, I want to commend the Garden Grove Unified School District on their swift and decisive response to this incident and I am proud that they are working closely with the Orange County Human Relations Commission to address issues of racism and discrimination.”

“The County has zero tolerance for hate of any kind, and we are dedicated to protecting the safety of all Orange County residents,” said Chairwoman Michelle Steel, Second District. “We encourage students experiencing discrimination to reach out to their local counselors, teachers or parents so this inappropriate behavior is properly addressed.”

“It is unacceptable that a few Bolsa Grande High School students added emotional duress to their classmates during our turbulent, emotional climate,” said Supervisor Donald Wagner, Third District. “Our next-generation must learn to unite under challenges and exercise extra grace as much as possible. I want to kindly remind that the public that they should act to rally — and not crush — the courage of those facing the stigma around COVID-19; a healthy future depends on it,” said Supervisor Wagner.

“This is a stressful time for people,” said Supervisor Doug Chaffee, Fourth District. “I want to thank Garden Grove Unified School District for handling this incident appropriately, and I hope this incident prevents possible discrimination in the future.”

“Discrimination of any kind is never tolerated and misinformation often leads to more issues of concern,” said Supervisor Lisa Bartlett, Fifth District. “The County will continue to provide our residents the most up to date information and I hope everyone will utilize this service to remain good neighbors for the health and safety of the entire community.”

“Stigma related to COVID-19 can be avoided if we stay educated from reliable sources,” said Michael Reynolds, Chair of the Orange County Human Relations Commission. “The incident at Bolsa Grande High School demonstrates that we must continue to educate and raise awareness of discrimination, and we look forward to working with the Garden Grove Unified School District on this matter.”

SANTA ANA, Calif. (March 16, 2020) – The Orange County Human Relations Commission issues the following statement on discrimination against the Chinese American and Asian American community due to fears about COVID-19, commonly known as novel coronavirus.

“We stand with the Chinese American and Asian American community against the rise of racist rhetoric, stigma, and paranoia due to fears about COVID-19. We support the right of every person to go to school, work, and other public places without being subjected to race-based discrimination. During times of crisis, Orange County residents will rise above the tendency to look for scapegoats. We will not give into fear, panic, prejudice and discrimination.

We encourage residents who have experienced a hate incident or other racist actions related to the coronavirus outbreak to report it to the OC Human Relations Commission Hate Crime division by calling 714-480-6570 or filing online at http://www.ochumanrelations.org/hatecrime/report/.”

The OC Health Care Agency (HCA) continues to engage and monitor the rapidly changing worldwide response to COVID-19. Residents are encouraged to visit HCA’s website or call the HCA’s Health Referral Line from Monday – Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at (800) 564- 8448 and monitor HCA’s social media channels for the most accurate and up-to-date information related to COVID-19.

About OC Human Relations Commission The mission of the OC Human Relations Commission is to seek out the causes of tension and conflict, discrimination and intolerance and attempt to eliminate those causes. We serve to advise the Board of Supervisors on issues that affect the human and civil rights. The Commission is led by volunteer members of the public appointed by the Orange County Board of Supervisors to seek out the causes of tension and conflict; discrimination and intolerance based on race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, age, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, or marital status. For more information, please visit the OC Human Relations Commission website at: http://occommunityservices.org/ochrc.

Felony hate crime and other charges were filed Tuesday against Bryce Cameron Agius, 27, a man accused of directing racially derogatory comments at four Latino men, throwing a knife at a Costa Mesa police officer and head-butting another officer when taken to jail, according to the O.C. Register.

Agius, who is white, is charged with four counts of committing a hate crime and one count each of assault with a weapon on a peace officer and resisting arrest, according to Deputy District Attorney Jake Jondle, according to CBS News. Continue reading→

CAUCASIAN TRANSIENT CHARGED WITH HATE CRIME FOR YELLING RACIAL SLURS AND SPITTING ON HISPANIC WOMAN BEFORE TRYING TO RUN HER OVER WITH BIKE

WESTMINSTER – A transient Caucasian man has been charged with a hate crime battery and assault for yelling racial slurs at a Hispanic woman, spitting on her, and trying to run her over with his bicycle. Jonathan Michael Schmidt, 31, transient, is charged with two felony counts of hate crime battery and one felony count of hate crime assault. Continue reading→

Failed Santa Ana mayoral candidate Alfredo Amezcua’s Political Action Committee, which he calls the “Santa Ana Coalition for Better Government,” (SACBG) has sent out a bizarre email asking its members to show up to Tuesday night’s Santa Ana City Council meeting in protest of Santa Ana Mayor Pro Tem Claudia Alvarez while at the same time advocating against the PBID – the assessment charged to property owners in part of Downtown Santa Ana.

Do these self-serving yahoos realize that Alvarez is the ONLY Santa Ana Council Member who agrees with them regarding PBID? Why would they turn on her when she is advocating their position? How ridiculous are these people? Continue reading→

If you’ve ever visited the the Santa Ana Public Library in the Civic Center you probably have noticed a statue of a man holding a dove in front of the main entrance and asked yourself “who is he”? Is it a statue honoring one of Santa Ana’s or Orange County’s forefathers? Is it a statue honoring a historical figure from literature? An author perhaps? No this statue is none of these.

The nine-foot bronze statue that was erected in 1994 honors Alex Odeh, the west-coast regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, who was murdered October 11, 1985 in a terrorist attack right here in Santa Ana at 1905 E. 17th Street. Odeh was killed when a bomb triggered as he put the key into his office door exploded. The FBI classified the bombing as a terrorist attack and believed that Jewish militants from the Jewish Defense League (JDL) were probably responsible for the murder. Continue reading→

When George Collins, a past candidate for Santa Ana Mayor, showed up at a Republican Party of Orange County event in Yorba Linda, his aim was to film the comments made by the speakers, and then put them up on his YouTube page. He surely had no idea what was going to happen after he put up the video, which shows Villa Park Council Member Deborah Pauly making very harsh statements about Orange County’s Muslim community.

What set Pauly off was the actions of the Muslim Student Union at the University of California at Irvine (UCI). Eleven Muslim students were arrested during Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren’s speech on campus in February. Those 11 students stood up one at a time and yelled during Oren’s presentation and were subsequently detained, according to the O.C. Register.

Michael B. Oren is the State of Israel’s Ambassador to the United States.

A graduate of Princeton and Columbia, Dr. Orenhas received fellowships from the U.S. Departments of State and Defense, and from the British and Canadian governments. Formerly, he was the Lady Davis Fellow of Hebrew University, a Moshe Dayan Fellow at Tel-Aviv University, and the Distinguished Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Yale, and Georgetown.

Ambassador Oren has written extensively for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The New Republic, where he was a contributing editor. His two most recent books, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East and Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present, were both New York Times bestsellers. They won the Los Angeles Times’ History Book of the Year prize, a National Council of the Humanities Award, and the National Jewish Book Award.

Raised in New Jersey, where he was an activist in Zionist youth movements and a gold medal winning athlete in the Maccabia Games, Ambassador Oren moved to Israel in the 1970s. He served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces, in the paratroopers in the Lebanon War, a liaison with the U.S. Sixth Fleet during the Gulf War, and an IDF spokesman during the Second Lebanon War and the Gaza operation in January 2009. He acted as an Israeli Emissary to Jewish refuseniks in the Soviet Union, as an advisor to Israel’s delegation to the United Nations, and as the government’s director of Inter-Religious Affairs. He has testified before Congress and briefed the White House on Middle Eastern affairs.

Interesting. This guy Oren is no common diplomat. He has a lot of Arab blood on his hands. Now you could argue how that came to be, but the fact is I can understand why Muslim students might not be happy to welcome this man to their campus.

These Muslim students aren’t monsters, I don’t think. They are brave individuals who risked everything for what they thought waas right.

But Pauly thinks they are “unwelcome invaders.” Click here to see the video of her disturbing comments. I would normally embed the video here, but Collins disabled that feature on his YouTube page. He was upset because a Muslim organization used excerpts of his video in their own YouTube video, which was taken down when Collins claimed he had a copyright to the original video.

Collins, like Pauly, is a Republican. She is also a member of the OC GOP’s Executive Committee.

The dreaded Mexican-basher Joe Arpaio, who serves as Sheriff of Maricopa County, in Arizona, is going to be speaking tonight at the Nixon Library, which is located at 18001 Yorba Linda Blvd., in Yorba Linda, along with other Republicans, including

New Orange County Treasurer/Tax Collector Shari Freidenrich

Actor Lou Ferrigno

Commentators Phil Liberatore, Larry Elder and James Hirsen

I am very disappointed to see Freidenrich participating in this event. I met her during her campaign last year and she seemed somewhat moderate. I guess I was wrong about her!

Word just in that there will be an official organized protest of the event, starting at 5:30 pm. Click here for more info, on Facebook.

Santa Ana, CA – When Nick Rocz heard that an anti-gay group was planning to protest an upcoming performance of The Laramie Project, he had one thought: the show MUST go on. “The Laramie Project tells the story of a young man killed because he was gay. The idea that we would let a small group of anti-gay protestors stop us from telling that story is just unthinkable,” said Rocz, a senior at CSU Fullerton and performer in CSU Fullerton’s production of The Laramie Project. The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) has announced plans to protest this Saturday’s performance through their website.

The Laramie Project is a performance piece based on interviews conducted in Laramie, Wyoming in the wake of the murder of Matthew Shepard. Shepard’s murder in 1998 became one of the most well-known cases of anti-gay violence in the US. “The Laramie Project is a story of prejudice and fear that results in inconceivable violence. It is also a story of love and hope,” explains Assistant Professor Karyl Ketchum, a faculty member in the Women and Gender Studies Department at CSU Fullerton. “In a time when hatred seems increasingly tolerated on the political stage and in our schools, it becomes critical that we listen to the lessons that stories such as The Laramie Project have to teach us.” CSU Fullerton’s production concludes its run with performances every night at 8 PM from Thursday, November 11 through Saturday, November 13 at the Grand Central Art Theater in downtown Santa Ana.

“Given the content of the performance and the recent suicides among gay youth, (WBC)’s decision to protest this event is simply despicable,” said Katie Claburn, president of CSU Fullerton’s Queer Straight Alliance. The Westboro Baptist Church, based in Topeka, Kansas, is known for its anti-gay protests, including protests held at the funerals of US soldiers. The WBC is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and is actively monitored by the Anti-Defamation League.

“We’re planning a peaceful demonstration to counter their messages of hate with messages of love and acceptance,” said Claburn. CSU Fullerton’s Queer Straight Alliance is organizing students to gather in support of The Laramie Project. They will gather outside the Grand Central Art Theater starting at 6:30 PM on Saturday, November 13. “Our gathering will be a peaceful demonstration of support for the performers and attendees. And we want to show any gay youth out there that love is stronger than hate.”